.:Be Original:.

WE ALL HAVE A VOICE.
• It’s been done before: Lots of people will tell you that no matter what you write, it’s been done before. But while this is true to some extent, it isn’t what you think. So much creativity gets hindered and discouraged when people basically tell you that no matter how hard you try, you’ll never come up with anything original. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. Whether or not it’s a struggle for you, it’s always worth it to come up with your own unique and original idea not based off anything else. I’m going to show you an example of just why originality is not dead. The following paragraph can be interpreted in a variety of different ways.
• In-story example: The world was wide open but KD often felt trapped. KD was a tall brunette with long hair, and sun-tanned skin save a few silvery skin scars from events in the not too distant past. Echoes of voices could be heard about, but they never got too close. The sun continually tried to pierce through the clouds—it often failed. The slight but entirely revolting smell of fish was in the air. The weather was chilly as KD walked through with the usual mindset, hoping that no eyes were watching. A fast pace turned faces away. There was nothing to see here, or was there?
o Interpretation: Is KD a male or female? What exactly is “long” length of hair? And how tall is tall? What are the scars from? Something as simple as a fight or something more regular and deeper? What does KD do out in the sun, and for how long that it would make their skin tanned? Was silvery just a unique descriptive word for a standard scar or is there something “special” involved? How distant is not too distant? What time of year is it, early spring or early fall? Or is it just an unusually cold summer day, or a “warm” winter day? Where is KD walking through? What is KD’s “usual” mindset?
o All of these questions will be answered by different people in different ways. Some people I’m sure thought of questions that I didn’t even include on here, or answers I would never come up with. And that’s precisely why originality is not dead—by nature we each have our own individualistic way of processing things. But unfortunately society tells you to try and fight this, but not in so many words. From a psychological standpoint it seems absolutely obvious that people will interpret the story paragraph in many different ways based on the structure of words, the words themselves, and what the words and phrases appear like in your mind. They might strike a chord. You might be intrigued by the character and story, or you might be bored or disturbed, even, by it. Everyone is different.
o Society would have us all swooning over and imitating all of the popular things but if you want a truly original idea then you must deviate from this ideal’s standpoint to create your own work so that it might have hope of standing out on its own.
• Your vernacular: The way you word things is super super important. Wording things in a clumsy way, especially in the beginning of a story, might lose your readers or even disgust them. Every word, sound, phrase, sentence, paragraph, character, description, sensory explanation, setting, and everything else you talk about in the story is from your own unique way of speaking. Even if you aren’t talking, the written word still has a voice. There are so many ways to word “the same thing” but a lot of ways are better than others. Think about word choice and phrase order. Think about your own thought process and how to get the messages of the story across in the best, unique way into your reader’s mind. Help them visualize exactly what you see in the way that you want them to see it. Being careful in wording is how you can control, for the most part, how the reader perceives and feels for the characters and the events of the stories. If you don’t have good control over your words, then what are you writing for? If you don’t know what you’re doing then how can you expect the reader to know what's going on, or to even care at all?
• Your plot: As a writer you should know by now you can’t plan every little detail of a plot. Some has to be spontaneous and fun but other parts have to be clever and well thought out. Keep the right balance to involve your reader. Show them the ups and downs of your character’s world, whether you want it to all be smooth sailing or lots of rocky, hard ups and downs. The way you word things is still the most important thing. You have to know your words to be able to show the intensity and the emotion of what the characters are going through.
• Your characters: People!!! People have so much to them, I don’t even know where to start! You’ll never find the end of how deep you can go when you dive into a character’s personality. Tell about their facets, the way they act in different situations, the way they change over time and the way they act around others. Show their hopes, dreams, hobbies, goals, fears, and pet peeves. Think about the things they know about themselves and the things they don’t know that maybe other people can see, as well as secret things about them only you know. Everyone looks at a character with a different set of eyes and maybe gets ideas about them which you did not.
• Your setting: Show their world. Reflect the image of their world that you see so vividly inside your head and don’t miss a detail. Include details in words that people might overlook. Leave some room for interpretation but create obvious atmospheres when necessary and vague where needed as well. Use objects in setting to foreshadow the plot or maybe refer to something in the past. Setting has a variety of uses, limited only to the imagination. Create unique objects, places, patterns, climates, plants, buildings, animals, and other such things.
• Your interpretation: Your interpretation and way of using vernacular and connotation is also important. Some things you write about may have completely different connotations to other people and they all interpret things just a little bit different. Maybe some phrase you use just irritated them or gave them an uneasy feeling when it wasn’t meant to or maybe some subtle hint went right over their heads and they missed the beginning of the tense atmosphere. True, there are lots of things that most people generally interpret the same way but it’s just not possible for us to ALL be the same and we shouldn’t try to make it that way. Interpretation is a key element of originality.
• Your application: How you apply what you’ve learned and what you perceive is also different from other people. If you say you have a character who gained spider powers from being bitten, I’d immediately call you on making a rip-off of Spiderman without a further thought. But if you say you have an alien girl who was mauled by a gigantic spider-type alien from a different planet and he injected his species’ powers into her and turned her half-spider, I would say that sounds pretty different. It’s all about going in depth too. The MORE DETAIL YOU ADD, THE HARDER IT IS FOR PEOPLE TO IMITATE. So don’t be afraid to dive in. People will try, but they won’t be able to successfully copy your exact voice.
• Your direction: If everyone is given the same first page of a story and told to continue it, they will all do so differently. No story will be exactly the same. And like I said before, the more in depth you go, the less likely it is for someone to even want to imitate you at all. Due to everyone thinking differently, we all have different processes in our head as to what plot ideas we’d throw up into the air, what we’d resolve, what we wouldn't, and when and why it would all happen. We’d all go about things in different orders, and add and take away different things.
• Emotion: Wording and action and events invoke different kinds of emotions to the reader and you want to keep them involved. So change it up and don’t stick to the same thing or have too many predictable patterns. Don’t be predictable! But don’t let your story get out of control so much that it doesn’t make sense either.
• In art: everyone has their own styles. You might try to imitate someone else’s style but it’ll still look like your version of it, even if it still looks like their style too. This isn’t something you can really change and you shouldn’t want to. We all have tendencies to draw the eyes certain ways, the hair, the body, the shading, and the most basic lines. We have our preferences, style strengths, and weaknesses.
• Take away: Things that are implied will also give you different ideas and leave you to wonder about aspects of the story and characters which may or may not be touched on later. What you take away from the story, whether you are soured on some parts of it or you love or hate it all, is each completely different. We could all read the same words and get completely different thoughts and feelings from it which do not make sense to each other but hey, it’s what we are. We’re all different. And if it’s worth the time and effort to you, I’m sure you’ll find your own unique idea and the voice to speak it out.